Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, was a French naturalist, mathematician, biologist, cosmologist and author. Buffon's views influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin. Darwin himself, in his foreword to the 6th edition of The Origin of Species, credited Aristotle with foreshadowing the concept of natural selection but also stated that "the first author who in modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon".

Buffon is best remembered for his great work Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (1749-1778: in 36 volumes, 8 additional volumes published after his death by Lacépède). It included everything known about the natural world up until that date.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.